Home ▼

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Music Centers Assessing the Treble

Clef Staff

I have previous posts on how I use centers in my

music room. You may click this link to read those posts.

I recently planned a lesson for 4th and 5th grade

classes to review the pitches of the treble clef staff
using centers. My class periods are 50 minutes. So, we
planned for 10 minutes or so to explain the centers and
then each group would have about 10 minutes to rotate
at each of the four centers.
Giant Staff Twister

In one center, students played Twister using the giant

floor staff. I used gym tape to create the staff lines on
my floor and used the existing 12 inch tiles to keep my
lines perfectly parallel. I have one spinner with the
letters of the lines of spaces and one spinner to
determine which body part should touch the correct
line or space. The spinners are available on my
teacher pay teacher store. I introduced Giant Staff
Twister last year and it has become a favorite for the
students.
Treble Toss

Many people who have blogged about the giant floor

staff have had students try to toss bean bags on a
specific line or space. Here in Kentucky, cornhole has
become a very popular backyard game and I knew my
students would love the challenge of tossing a bean
bag through a hole. So, I used 2 trifold display boards
(like you would use to display science fair projects) and
created a staff with holes on the lines and spaces.
Students would draw a popsicle stick to randomly
select a pitch letter. Then, they had 3 chances to toss
their beanbag into the correct hole. After their turn
tossing beanbags at the spaces board, they would get
in the back of the line for the lines board.
This game was a hit! To set up the boards, I borrowed
a couple spare student desks from our furniture
storage room. One flap rested on the top of the desk
and I set a heavy object (a chromatic glockenspiel) on
top of the cardboard. You could use a few heavy books
or whatever items you want. The bottom flap would
rest against the legs of the desk and caused the board
to be slightly tilted which helped stabilize the board
when the beanbags were tossed. The boards fold flat
and lay horizontal in my cabinets, so it will be easy to
pull these out and use them again in the future.
Staff Wars

The third center involved the Activboard. I downloaded

Staff Wars from The Music Interactive. This is a free
download for your pc. They have a new app version
which is only 99 cents. The object of the game is to
click the correct letter name of each note as it scrolls
across the staff. The game gradually gets faster and
more difficult. You can select the clef of your choice
and also adjust the range of the notes it will give the
students. The students LOVED this game! There are
also several other free music games available on
themusicinteractive.com. I look forward to downloading
some more and trying them out.
Exit Slip and Flashcards
The fourth center involved an exit slip assessment
which would be graded. The exit slip had students
identifying letter names of some notes on the staff. The
students were also asked to practice drawing a treble
clef. The exit slips can be downloaded on my teachers-
pay-teachers store.

As the students finished, they got to quiz each other

with flash cards until it was time for the next rotation.
The flash cards were a free download from Making
Music Fun! The cards are one sided, so I added the
letter names on the back so the kids could quiz each
other. I printed these on cardstock so they would be
more durable.

I know your students will enjoy these games as

much as mine did! Enjoy!

miredo at 11:58 AM

Share

3 comments:

Molly November 4, 2014 at 3:25 PM

I'm finally making my Treble Toss and Staff Twister
games today during my work day! So excited to use
them tomorrow- thanks for the ideas!! :)
Reply

Kathy May 18, 2017 at 1:50 PM

I know this post was from awhile ago, but how did you
cut the circles in Treble Toss? Thinking of using this
with my students this summer.
Reply

Jessica Barefoot January 7, 2018 at 6:36 PM

Mrs. Dennis you are awesome! I want to be in your
class :)
Can't wait to try some of these ideas with my
elementary music AND band students (middle and high
schoolers like having fun too!).

Thanks for sharing ideas! I've been teaching 11 years

and it's always fun finding new things to do. I always
say we music teachers have the most fun job in the
school, and if we have a boring day it's no one's fault
but our own.

Reply

To leave a comment, click the button below to sign in

with Google.

SIGN IN WITH GOOGLE

‹ Home ›
View web version

Powered by Blogger.